Review: Bezdan – Spirits of the Past

Bezdan – Spirits of the Past

Intro

Spirits of the Past

Ritual and Prayer

Ashes and Ruins

Iz Crnila

Eclipsed by Raven Wings (Goatmoon cover)

Label: Wolfspell RecordsDate: March 20, 2018

Usually when you put words “Serbia” and “Black metal” your thoughts will go on bands like Triumfall, The Stone, Introitus or May Result. But in last few years Serbia become really fertile ground for antichristian and pagan black metal. Serbia gave a lot of new bands with 10+ years of existence but they started to emerge in last few years on scene, from darkness.

Bands like Propast, Svartgren, Kolac raised banner of Serbian black metal really high in underground scene nowdays, but here we will talk about one young and new band – Bezdan.

Bezdan is old and archaic Balkanian word and we can translate it like “Abyss” or in literal translation that would be “Without Day (light)”. Band was born in 2015 in small Serbian town called Jagodina. I was only once in that town years back and I only remembered it for good beer (Jagodinsko) and a lot of skinheads in the town.

But far from eyes of citizens of Jagodina, few guys delivered us pure cold black metal. In front of me is their EP called “Spirits of the Past”. Here we received around 24 minutes of brilliant music. Formula of this material is simple but effective; riffs that will shread your mind in half, drums grinding from the behind and vocals that will scream at you all the time.

Sound on this material is really deeply rooted and inspired with sound that you will easily find in Finnish bands like Goatmoon, Sargeist, Horna etc. Don’t think that this EP is some kind of homage for Finnish black metal. We can say that lads find inspiration in Finnish black metal sound, but this is Balkanian sound presented in it’s filthiest and furious form. There is not even sloppy second here. Bezdan bringing you black metal that is almost dead today. You can hear sound that is easily found in nineties black metal releases. Production is brilliant yet giving you space to figured out that this is real underground.

There is six songs on release. Intro, four author’s songs and Goatmoon’s cover song “Eclipsed by Raven Wings”. Personally I hope that band will deliver us more songs written on Serbian (native) language on next material. On song “Iz Crnila” (means “From Blackness”) they proved that they can make blasting song.

Like music, front cover is also simple but effective. You have old ruined church with inverted cross on top of it, band’s logo and EP’s title. Real black metal that died years ago. Not some fancy drawings, or similar shits. Just black metal with “fist in your face” attitude.

I can only said to you that you need to keep your eyes on this band. If we will judge them by this first release, they would be one of a hellishly great band. EP you can purchase on Polish label Wolfspell Records and I can guarantee you that you will be not disappointed.